Posted
by
Soulskill
on Wednesday January 20, 2010 @08:52AM
from the can-you-hear-me-now dept.

penguinrecorder writes "The Thunder Generator uses a mixture of liquefied petroleum, cooking gas, and air to create explosions, which in turn generate shock waves capable of stunning people from 30 to 100 meters away. At that range, the weapon is relatively harmless, making people run in panic when they feel the sonic blast hitting their bodies. However, at less than ten meters, the Thunder Generator is capable of causing permanent damage or killing people."

Just firing a handgun without hearing protection is enough to rip out the hair cells in your ears (which don't grow back) and cause permanent hearing loss. I'm pretty sure that if this thing is capable of "stunning" people it's doing lasting damage to your auditory system. That damage may be small, but it remains that the ringing you hear in your ears afterward is still a set of frequencies you'll never hear again.

Reporting in the medical journal Thorax, they describe the cases of four young men who suffered a lung collapse -- technically called pneumothorax -- that appeared to be triggered by loud music. Three of the men were at a concert or club when the pneumothorax occurred, while the fourth was in his car, which was outfitted with a 1,000-watt bass box because he "liked to listen to loud music."

I don't see the big news here. At close range it's easy to kill. Even something like a $5 potato cannon can kill people at close range. Being in close proximity to exploding things has never really been good for your health..

I don't see the big news here. At close range it's easy to kill. Even something like a $5 potato cannon can kill people at close range. Being in close proximity to exploding things has never really been good for your health..

I dunno... 10 meters isn't really what I would personally call "close range." That's 30ish feet... Roughly the height of a three-story building. That's a good amount of distance between you and the target.

And I wonder what the area of affect is like... Is this a single-target thing, or a crowd-dispersal thing? Because if it's designed for crowd control, I'm imagining it's got a pretty big area of effect... And you can fit an awful lot of people in a 30' cone... All of which would be permanently injured or killed.

If you look at the article...

According to company data, the system generates 60 to 100 bursts per minute, each traveling at about 2,000 meters per second and lasting up to 300 milliseconds.

"The potatoe is a non-lethal vegetable. In fact, there is only one tuber that is considered a weapon, but it is grown only in the upper most reaches of the Andeas on the boarders of Chile and Peru," Buddy went on to say.

Did you know millions of potatoes have been shipped around the world as humanitarian relief. Not a single one has been used in military agression. There has only been one instance of a potato being used to kill. That was the aforementioned Peruvian Murder Spud (rough translation) that the CIA used in an assasination attempt on the husband of Evita Peron.

I don't really have problems with them using it when they would have used 'other' less lethal weapons anyways, such as tear gas and water hoses.

This probably won't replace shotgun bean bags or tasers, they're individual weapons while this is a mass weapon.

The problem comes from proper usage - potentially violent crowds are often led by 'professional' exciters, and they'd be smart enough to know that if you can get people within that 10 meter unsafe zone the operators are a lot less likely to set it off, and

Ya, it's not news. It sounds like a potato cannon without the potato, firing at 100 pulses per minute. Pretty interesting that they're getting that kind of rate, but still, obviously dangerous.

There's a reason a concussion grenade works, and it's not always shrapnel. I'm guessing the 10m deadly zone is directly downrange of the cannon, not beside or behind it. It's still a contained explosion, so all the force goes

I think that the idea here is for this to act as a barrier - an invisible fence if you will. As long as you start it up with no one near it, people will not want to GET near it. The nearer they get, the more it affects them.

Seems like it would be workable. Plus, I bet there is a way to ramp up the effects over, say a minute? That would help to clear everyone out from the destructive zone before it hits full power.

[G]overnments have been looking for "non-lethal" crowd control devices like this [...]

I actually find this worrisome, from the standpoint of civil liberty. Non-violent protest actually relies on the brutality of governmental response to provoke sympathy and garner support for one's cause. While the so-called "non-lethal" weapons of today are still pretty brutal, I invite people to follow me on a little thought experiment that illustrates my concern.

Let's carry non-lethal crowd control methods to their ultimate conclusion. Imagine a device that lulls people to sleep, whereupon they're carried home, placed in their beds, enjoy a night's rest like the haven't managed in months, and awake to find a chocolate morsel on their nightstands and a terrifically refreshed sense of well-being. If crowds of peaceful protesters are broken up by repressive governments using this device, how much sympathy will that garner? How effective will civil disobedience be?

The scenario I describe is purposefully fanciful and exaggerated. Nevertheless, my point is that non-lethal methods carry the very real threat of keeping bad governments from looking all that bad. Government should hurt; and repressing civil disobedience should carry the risk of looking bad. Otherwise, you can be sure it will be used at the drop of a hat. And that may just pose a problem.

Article doesn't give too many details, but if it's a vortex cannon it could be capable stunning people without causing hearing loss. The question is whether you get stunned by a wall of air or very loud sound. I don't trust reporters to be able to distinguish the two.

You have to see it to understand it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am12NZwr3Fk [youtube.com]
Vortex cannons send out a spiraling ring of air. They can hit people and things with some serious force, but it's not due to sound.

Yes and no -- and no in this case -- as far as I understand. (I'd appreciate clarification/correction/confirmation from others on the points I make below.)

In most contexts -- and I assume sound falls into this category -- the energy of a signal is its squared L2 norm. (This is certainly true for the power dissipated in a resistive load by a voltage or current signal.) Anyway, the L2 norm is invariant under the Fourier transform. And you'll notice that a Dirac delta has the same L2 norm whether it's as 2

"Anyone within 30 to 50 meters from the cannon will feel like he's standing in front of a firing squad," he said. "He'll feel and hear the blast, but he won't be hurled to the ground. He'll be able to run away unharmed and that's the point of this application."

It seems this will not have much physical force, but will indeed have potential for causing hearing loss.

I grew up hunting and fishing. I had to pass what was then the bronze, silver and gold small calibre standards. A 20 gauge over and under and a colt 45 remain my favourite weapons although I no longer own guns or hunt. I'm unaware of any permanent damage to hearing caused by handguns, unless you're specifically speaking to indoor ranges. My hearing tests out excellent and I'd hate to see the carnage and spent rounds my years of hunting and target shooting would amount to.

You got lucky, somehow. Nearly everyone who does a significant amount of shooting without hearing protection ends up with permanent hearing damage. You can probably get away with firing a lot of.22 shells through a rifle without too much concern, but shorten the barrel or increase the powder charge, or both, and if you don't wear some protection you will probably be sorry. Well, not YOU, I guess, but the rest of us.

Thanks, did not know that, although I'd like to know if damage is more likely from a a weapon fired from someone standing next to you, like when two or more people are walking a field bird hunting. I always found the report of a weapon fired by someone nearby was more forceful than from a weapon I fired. My dad once got hold of a 10 gauge goose gun and we took it out for an afternoon, that was an impressive, if niche, weapon. Unfortunately he wouldn't let me fire it because he was afraid the recoil would do

Large hot pipe organ at Robodock, hard to see but pump up the volume.The machine in the article sounds a lot like one we built there, only our "cannons" where controlled through Cubase/Fruityloops-style music software. And pointed straight up to minimize lethality, allthough glass still shattered at 50 meters/150 feet.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oceb7Uf4ucQ [youtube.com]

I think i can design, produce and operate shows that will leave most people slack-jawed(think Fusion/Robodock/Burningman/Glastonbury if that means anything to you). But i'm in Holland, and it takes a lot of time, people or money, pick two ; ). In fact, pick three.

I know just the people for a massive midi/torches show, they do basslines on huge freestanding torches ON the dancefloor with overhead flames and explosions, and mid and high on a small fireorgan. They did the dancefloor at Fusion a couple of year

In my view, "Disaster Area" isn't a destination, but a development path. We should work our way up from riot control equipment to WMDs to planet killing gear. A high end concert might involve dropping large black holes into each other so that the galaxy can feel the beat via gravity waves powerful enough to rip stars apart. And since the galaxy is your stage, you'll sell a lot of tickets!

All I can add is that LPG is not actually the same as the stuff called "petrol" in English and "gasoline" in American. It's a lighter fraction that would be gaseous at RTP but is kept as a liquid in a pressurised tank.

Yet again, OP gets it a little bit wrong, but in this case you can't blame the poster because TFA states it wrong as well. LPG is short for for Liquified Petroleum Gas, and it IS "cooking gas", it isn't "mixed with" cooking gas. Jeez. LPG is usually propane or butane or a mixture of them.

Having stated that, I will add my voice to what others have already posted: this device is a disaster waiting to happen. It has no place in "positive" enforcement scenarios. It might be useful as a self-defense weapon, but I question even that.

We already have water cannon, if the object is crowd control/riot control/etc. Why do we need something with what strikes me as considerably more potential for damaging people, since they won't be able to SEE it and get the hell out of its path?

Because water cannon need - wait for it - water. Not always in abundant supply at the volumes we're considering. According to TFA, you can do quite a bit of 'crowd control' with a small, portable tank of LP gas. A tactical improvement over what basically is a fire truck.

It's primary purpose is to end a threat without killing. Which, oddly enough, is the purpose of weapons for non-evil folk.

Generally, even crooks don't want to kill people, they just want to deter you from interfering with their crime. Some bad guys revel in killing, but that's why we dedicate a segment of our society to dealing with them: police and military. It's unfortunate, but the bad guys don't give a shit about what is fair or the resources wasted on deterring, persuing, trying and imprisoning. Th

Because then the people who spent their resources on developing new ways to kill use those innovations on the people that didn't.

Nope.

Genocide is really rare. Invasion, colonization and assimilation is a lot more common.

Killing people is almost entirely pointless. Threatening to kill people is what does the job, because people happen to be wired in ways that let them be controlled up to a point by such threats. When the threat level becomes too high they always fight back, of course, because they happen to be wired that way, too.

Gandhi's big trick was to realize that death threats are not generally credible, and react accordingly, which means not allowing your behaviour to be controlled by threats, and being willing to die rather than submit. There are specific circumstances where that won't work at all--such as the Jews in Nazi Germany--but in almost all cases peaceful, active resistance is far more effective.

These weapons, as others here have pointed out, are aimed at Gandhi-style tactics: by having a non-lethal response to a peaceful, active resistance it tilts the tables back toward the oppressors, who are basically engaging in mass instantaneous public torture-at-a-distance via the use of these weapons.

These weapons are designed to generate compliance with the alpha chimp's wishes by engaging people's pain response rather than their fear response. The latter can be fairly easily subverted, depending as it does on a vague cognitive connection between threat and outcome. The former is much tougher nut to crack, although it'll be interesting to see the first time the cops are on the receiving end of one of these weapons, which will no-doubt be reduced to hand-held form factors in the next couple of years.

Umm. Fully blind people can get CCWs? They can fire live rounds? I suppose I can see why the 2nd ammendment allows for that, but still, wtf America.

They're blind, not stupid or irresponsible. Blind people are perfectly capable of understanding the risks and potential consequences of using a firearm for self-defense. Granted that it's much more difficult for them to use a gun safely and effectively, but those obstacles are no more insuperable than many others a blind person faces. Obviously, they would only use their gun on an attacker at contact distance, and the idea of using blanks is to prevent innocents from being injured by overpenetration, since the blind person may not know who or what is on the other side of their target.

Personally, I wouldn't recommend blanks for that application. I'd recommend frangible bullets, or perhaps just a relatively light powder charge in a large caliber cartridge with a reliably-expanding jacketed hollowpoint. Blanks fired into the chest are unlikely to stop a determined attacker. On the other hand, 95% of firearms self-defense incidents don't involve a shot being fired at all -- the attacker sees the gun and runs away -- so blanks would work fine. With blanks, you could even fire a "warning shot" (NOT a good idea with real ammunition) to make the point that you're serious, which would probably raise the likelihood of the bad guy turning tail another percentage point or two.

Oh, and to answer the first question: Yes, in most states. A handful (e.g. Nevada) have range requirements that would be hard for a blind person to meet. Then again, there may be exceptions in the laws, or ways around them for disabled people.

In the '60s, the NRA spent ten years and $12 million developing a bullet able to be fired by blind people. It's a relatively light powder charge in a large caliber cartdrige with a reliably-expanding jacketed hollowpoint, designed so it can injure attackers at contact distance while being relatively harmless to people at range. Russians, however, just used a knife.

Re-read the post - he mentions blind people using blanks, so they can point a gun at a nearby attacker & fire, without much risk to anyone further away.

Also, a CCW entitles you to legally carry a weapon, not necessarily a gun - the details vary by state, but that may include a stun-gun, pepper-spray, knife, baton, you get the idea... A weapon that may normally be prohibited but is OK with a CCW permit. Some of those would be useful even if blind.

This is not the only sound based non-lethal weapon used by the IAF. They also use a device called The Scream [wanttoknow.info], which emits a sound that causes disorientation and nausea. This one works at low, inaudible frequencies that vibrate the internal organs of the targets. There is also an high frequency version that is audible, that also produces a burning sensation on the skin (but does not produce any permanent damage).

I think they were also toying with using these types of weapons against the pirates in Somalia.

Thats what a shock wave is. It moves faster than the local speed of sound of the medium its moving into. Behind the shock wave, the hotter, higher pressure gases has a much higher local speed of sound and the flow is "subsonic".*

* this is for all normal shocks, such as those from explosions. Oblique shock waves have different properties.

Yes, the detonation can be faster than the speed of sound but the resulting sound only propagates at the speed of sound.

To get those bursts to propagate to the target at supersonic rates there would have to be combustible gas all the way from the device to the target.

A jet fighter going at mach 2 carries with it a sonic boom traveling at 6 times the speed of sound.When it passes overhead at an altitude of 6k feet, you see it pass and you hear it 6 seconds later.The sonic boom travels at mach 2 only because

Turns out a single badass Deltal only known by his codename 'Dutch' (real name: Alan Schaeffer) killed a space alien in the jungle after a protracted stalking, and procured this weapon from the alien armor suit. The alien had managed to kill the rest of Dutch's team but somehow Dutch set off a low yield nuclear weapon and destroy the creature. This report was leaked by the tin foil underground movement, and is the real source of this new weapon.

American Idol (the 'real competition' portion - not the auditions that are sometimes hilarious), Eurovision Song Contest, and America/Britain's Got Talent. Within 10 meters, all of these can be lethal to people with IQs greater than 75. At distances greater than 10 meters, I am not sure of the lethality...but just hearing it causes me to double over with pain.

A bomb is a sound generator too, and maybe we should this thing for what it is, a bomb. It is very loud when it explodes, and is world renowned for its ability to stun people at safe distances and kill them at closer distances.

I would love to mount one of these babies under the hood and use it as a killer car horn for those drivers who JUST. WON'T. MOVE. One blast from this thing and they'll never sit there texting at the green light again. Also handy for those clueless people who drive UNDER THE SPEED LIMIT in the leftmost lane. Can't take a hint? Can't see my lights flashing? Don't realize you're clogging up the expressway? BOOOOMMMMM. Imagine the satisfying feeling as they instinctively floor the accelerator while blood dribbles down from their ears! Ahhh.

There is a very nice solution to the slow drivers.
Just carry a laser pointer, and carefully point inside his vehicle in a place (s)he can see. Then thanks to Hollywood, they run away as fast as they can.

I believe making people think you are pointing a lethal weapon at them with a laser sight attached is an extremely bad idea unless you actually are pointing a lethal weapon at them, since it justifies them shooting first in self defense. And yes, I had coworkers who thought it would be "fun" to shine a laser pointer into the studios across the street -- please don't do that when I'm standing in the window!

Assuming that a visible laser dot means you are being targeted by somebody with a laser sight is Hollywood nonsense. I really doubt any judge/jury would accept that as justification for shooting first. There are assholes all over the place shining lasers in places where they shouldn't, we can't just go around blowing them all away, much as we might wish to.

"How about those assholes that honk their horns and flash their highbeams behind me when I'm doing 5 over the speed limit but think I should get out of the left lane anyway?"

You should get out of the left lane unless you're passing someone. The left lane is for passing - you do not drive in that lane for any period of time or at any speed, unless passing. Why don't more people know/respect this law?

Upon all roadways any vehicle proceeding at less than the normal speed of traffic at the time and place and under the conditions then existing shall be driven in the right-hand lane then available for traffic...

Note that this law refers to the "normal" speed of traffic, not the "legal" speed of traffic. The 60 MPH driver in a 55 MPH zone where everybody else is going 65 MPH must move right. Contrast Alaska's rule, 13 AAC 002.50, allowing vehicles driving at the speed limit to use the left lane, and Colorado rev. stat. 42-4-1103, prohibiting blocking the "normal and reasonable" movement of traffic.

Emphasis is mine. It's almost as if the author of that page is responding directly to your GP post...

The places where this sort of thing are valuable are places where you want to control or forbid access to an area without lethal force. An example above described use of sonic weapons against pirate boarding parties. Another would be at exit points to correctional facilities, to control prison riots. Alarm systems that interdict could use such devices to drive back unauthorized entry (for example, in case of a breakin at a nuclear power plant or military facility). They wouldn't be much use for crowd co

Yeah, I'd prefer a cannon too. I remember reading in a magazine ( maybe Popular Mechanics? ) way back when about some Nazi Death Machines that were supposedly in the works near the end of WWII. They had a machine that worked on natural gas being exploded in a pipe that sounds substantially identical to this. The idea was to repel enemy troops trying to charge. It was one of those things that was just not practical on the battlefield, and never used.